6DevOps Roles You Need to Know About

DevOps, unlike traditional technologies, is an approach that was incepted by the combination of multiple workflows which includes the development, testing and operations domains. Because of this strange but logical combination of technologies, this new methodology has given rise to several new careers that were non-existent half a decade ago.

While this may be good news for professionals, it has still been quite hectic to understand each of these job roles. Moreover, the sheer number of new jobs has only contributed to the confusion of most white-collar workers. The question in each of our minds remains, ‘Which is the DevOps role that best suits my background and aspirations?’

In this blog, we will discuss the six major job roles in the DevOps methodology which might help you determine where you should start. But, before we get to that, let’s first understand what DevOps is at its core.

The DevOps practice emphasizes on the fact that a developer (Dev) should be skilled in the operations (Ops) workflow as well. Similarly, an Ops professional should know what a Dev does on his usual days. This means that a DevOps professional needs to be skilled in multiple technologies, domains and workflows. The overall idea is to combine both the Dev and Ops sections of the industry to improve productivity and promote continuous improvement in the final product.

Now that you know what the basic idea od DevOps is, let’s look at the six major job roles in the DevOps market right now.

Software Developer or Tester

This is DevOps role which is responsible for the root-level coding and testing of the software. Any traditional developer or tester can take up this role. Along with the coding and testing skills, a DevOps Software Developer or Tester needs to have a few additional skills. This is because they are responsible not only for converting new requirements into code, but they also need to carry out unit testing, deployment, and the overall ongoing monitoring, as well.

Quality Assurance (QA) Engineer

This is a role that is an extension to the traditional testing and quality checking profiles. Introduced newly in the DevOps methodology, Quality Assurance Engineers are responsible for guaranteeing a product’s final quality.

Quality Assurance Engineers are also called Experience Engineers. The responsibilities of a QA Engineer include testing the functionality of a product to its limits to ensure all flaws are accounted for. A QA Engineer also needs to improve the performance of all the standalone features. The overall idea is to improve all the features of your product to improve the final user-experience.

Automation Expert

DevOps is all about automation, so this is a central role in the DevOps cycle. The core responsibilities of an Automation Expert include understanding and exploring all workflows and cycles that can be automated. Further, an Automation Expert should also know how to integrate one product stack with another to ensure high productivity and efficiency.

Another name for an Automation Expert is an Integration Specialist. Their job description also includes responsibilities like analysis, designing, and strategic planning for continuous deployment. These professionals are also responsible for ensuring good availability on pre-production and production systems.

Security Engineer

This is one of the most important job roles in the DevOps loop. Security Engineers are responsible for monitoring the overall deliverability of a product. They work closely with the development team, pitching in their recommendations to improve the software—security patches, a lot earlier in the process.

The biggest responsibility of a security engineer is to prevent any downtime and ensure minimal security risk. They continuously monitor system to check their performance and report any risks or downtime they observe. Additionally, they try and get to the root issue causing these problems and recommend solutions.

Release Manager

Another major role in the DevOps loop, a Release Manager is responsible for the integration of the new and updated features or applications in the existing framework of the project. Depending upon the size of the project, this can be a single professional or a team consisting of Release Engineers head by a Release Manager.

The primary focus of a professional in this role is to coordinate and manage the complete development, testing and deployment of a product. Release Engineers and Managers are usually experience professionals with a strong technical grasp as their role demands a fair amount of technical know-how.

DevOps Evangelist

This is the apex role in a DevOps environment. In a way, the DevOps Evangelist is the lead in the overall workflow. This professional is responsible for ensuring that proper measures are taken to implement the DevOps strategy in the end-to-end development and deployment of a product. Another major responsibility of a DevOps Evangelist is to find new ways to improve the existing architecture of the product. This involves considering factors like the size and capabilities of the Dev and Ops teams, the size of the project and initial deadlines.

The primary goal of a DevOps Evangelist is to manage all other DevOps roles and to obtain the highest efficiency from his team for a given project.

These were the six major DevOps roles in the market right now. We hope you were able to realize which of these roles suits you best. Each role has its own unique signature and responsibilities, all of them eventually leading up to the Evangelist role.

DevOps is not a difficult methodology to learn and adopt. But, there are multiple different skills you need to acquire to get into a professional career in this technological approach. This, in many cases might lead to further confusion. If you are aspiring to be a DevOps professional, why not learn from the experts at Edureka and become an expert yourself?